A fintech company used by Google, Amazon, and Airbnb raised $180 million

Payoneer, a US fintech company that helps businesses send and
receive money across borders online, has raised $180 million
(£141 million) in a Series E funding round.

The cash comes from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), a
Silicon Valley-headquartered VC fund that focuses on growth
funding for established tech businesses. TCV has backed giants
such as Facebook, Netflix, and Spotify.

The funding round is double Payoneer's funding to date and takes
its total raised to $270 million (£211 million). CEO Scott Galit
wouldn't comment on the company's valuation but it's likely in
the billions given the amount of equity doled out.

Founded in 2005, Payoneer has two main parts to its business:
helping small and medium-sized businesses make overseas payments
online; and helping global tech giants like Amazon, Airbnb, and
Google, to pay suppliers around the world.

"We approach the world with a basic thesis underlying what we
do," CEO Scott Galit told Business Insider.

"The first part of the thesis is that businesses of all sizes,
all over the world are increasingly technology-enabled,
connected, and global. Any business of any size anywhere in the
world is able to access technology and access the rest of the
world in a way that wasn't possible before.

"The second part of the thesis is there's a last mile for money.
It's local, it's regulated, it's controlled by financial
institutions and the regulators that regulate them and we don't
actually believe that's going to change. But what we see is this
increasing gap between what businesses need and what the
incumbent banking infrastructure is able to provide.

"We really see ourselves as building a bridge between these
increasingly divergent worlds. We built a global platform that
allows businesses to transact and trade with other businesses all
around the world."

Google uses Payoneer's
mass payout service.Google

Payoneer is processing "many billions of dollars" a year, Galit
says, and is getting 250,000 applications from SMEs each month.
It has customers across 200 countries and can do localised
payments in 130 countries.

Galit, a former senior vice president at MasterCard, says:
"What's hard about our business is how many layers of things we
have to get right. We have to have the regulatory side, we have
to have the compliance infrastructure, language, banking and
payment infrastructure. We have to have people who understand the
needs of customers around the world."

New York-headquartered Payoneer employs 800 people from Silicon
Valley to Tokyo and opened new offices in India, Japan and the
Philippines this year.

Galit says the fundraising will go towards further expansion,
saying: "We think we're really just scratching the surface of the
opportunity here. There are an estimated 350 million small and
medium enterprises in emerging markets. As much as technology is
changing our lives, it is having an absolutely transformation
effect on small businesses in developing markets."